I made a mistake last semester. Despite my terrible experience freshman year, I decided to take three writing-intensive classes again. Moreover, I began working with a new student organization, while doubling down on my commitment to another. Additionally, at my work-study job, a full-time employee was preparing to retire, so I accepted more hours in order to keep everything running smoothly in the office.

Growing up in a Southern town, I was used to sororities and to seeing Greek letters on every Instagram bio, so I wasn’t concerned about going to a conference filled with Southern girls. What I was nervous about was how my friends would react to my home. I’ve told them stories about my upbringing, but for the first time, they were going to experience it for themselves.

2020 is a big year coming: I will (hopefully) graduate, (hopefully) become employed and we will (hopefully) elect a new president! In the year leading up to America’s presidential elections, there’s a whirlwind of information to sort through. Amateur Policy Wonk has you covered, though. Here’s a sneak peek of politics leading up to 2020. Stay educated, folks!

As a member of A Place To Talk (APTT), a peer listening group on campus, I am very lucky to have learnt how to really listen to others in a way that can help someone tackle almost any problem. This doesn’t mean I can fix every situation that I hear about. On the contrary, APTT’s number one rule is that we do not give advice.

I am, as my mother would say, a “sensitive person who feels things deeply.” She’s not wrong. I have atopic dermatitis — a fancy medical term for “sensitive deep-feeler.” When I’m upset, a rash breaks out on my arms; when I’m stressed, I get bacne that looks like a topographical map of a piece of pizza. Even when I try hiding my feelings, my skin betrays me.

It’s 9 a.m., and you’re trying to rush home before anyone sees you in oversized sweatpants and a T-shirt, carrying your clothes from last night. The infamous walk of shame. But why do we label it as shameful? Why do we consider sex shameful?

In seventh grade, somewhere between the classes that neither students nor teachers cared about and the hormone and Axe-filled gym period, we had one hour set aside every week to visit the library. While I’m sure I would have preferred the patented middle school time-waster coolmathgames.com, the presence of our terrifying school librarian forced me to pretend to actually read.

In a world governed by social pressure to love and be loved, knowing how to be single is key to your health and that of your relationships. Knowing how to be single can be difficult, though, when surrounded by rom-coms, love songs and Disney-happy-endings.

The act of dating is complicated, to put it lightly. To text or not to text. To Snapchat or not to Snapchat. To wait a certain amount of time before responding to the text so you seem like you’re not on your phone 24/7 and have a very cool life or to not. These decisions feel monumental in the moment, creating a pressure that other generations just don’t understand.

Each morning, a Facebook notification arrives at the same time with the same message: “On this day, you have memories with…” That’s usually accompanied by a list of seven people, five of whom I don’t talk to anymore.

Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” is a bop — it topped charts in 25 countries and became one of the best-selling singles of all time. It’s also a monumental LGBTQ anthem in which Gaga embraces her bisexuality and affirms other LGBTQ identities, singing “I’m beautiful in my way / ‘Cause God makes no mistakes / I’m on the right track, baby I was born this way.”

People have lots of different words for it, all with slightly different implications. “Situationship,” “seeing each other” and “hanging out” are just a few. Ultimately though, they refer to the same vague thing: two people who like each other enough to act like a couple, but who, for some reason or other, won’t commit. Though there is some overlap in terminology, I’ve found these pseudo-relationships aren’t quite a part of “hookup culture,” really. Instead, they exist in a strange gray area somewhere between “friends with benefits” and an official relationship.

For years now, I have proudly identified myself as an intersectional feminist. I’m minoring in Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS) Studies and am currently working on an Honors Thesis project related to the history of fairy-tales and the implicit, gendered messages that they often contain.

In introducing my column for this upcoming semester, I want to transition between the positive relationships I wrote about last semester to focusing on more politically-charged experiences. I would like to provide a content warning to anyone who cannot read about sexuality and sexual violence.

It was a brisk December night in the Big Apple when I stood under the Washington Square Arch, as the greens and yellows and purples of the skyline glowed in the background. I was already exhausted from walking across Manhattan, having visited the National Museum of Mathematics and walked the High Line, but I also felt excited as I stood in the park waiting for our group of Subtle Asian Daters to form.

For a lot of people, Valentine’s Day is less a holiday and more a 24-hour block of dodging obnoxiously googly-eyed social media posts and couples feeling each other up in the middle of the quad. And, as always, it’s coming around again. In a week, every store will be plastered with red heart-shaped decorations and every decent restaurant will be booking up fast.

Growing up, I always hated my body. I was fat, and I was not happy about it. I hated eating in public because I felt embarrassed. Shopping for clothes was a nightmare, and whatever I ended up with would still be too tight in some places and too baggy in others. I worried that I’d never be able to get girls.